


For Good, Logistical Reasons

by scribblemyname



Category: Scholomance - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Massive Crush, Pining, hand holding, stuck in a closet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:00:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29419044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: It was a bad idea to get stuck in a closet. Even Orion knew that, for all the mals had little interest in attacking him directly.
Relationships: Galadriel "El"/Orion Lake
Comments: 13
Kudos: 57
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	For Good, Logistical Reasons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [entwashian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/entwashian/gifts).



Everything was supremely awkward. Orion desperately wanted to hold El's hand, and she clearly and rather desperately was engaged in more important matters, like working a spell on the lock on the closet door.

It was a bad idea to get stuck in a closet. Even Orion knew that, for all the mals had little interest in attacking him directly. It was a worse idea to get stuck in a locked closet, something Orion hadn't even fully realized the school _had,_ but somehow they'd managed to find the one closet with a lock, reach for a mop bucket, get rammed inside by some students shoving around, and the door was closed while said students screamed bloody murder and ran for help without actually doing anything otherwise useful.

Did El want to sit and wait around for the maintenance track kid likely soon due to arrive? Not likely, she'd scoffed, and so she was working a spell, cursing the lack of light, and Orion was trying to ignore that he was about three inches from pressed up against a girl he was halfway or all the way in love with and could literally feel her body heat warming him up.

"El? Can I help?"

"Do you speak Hindi?" she snapped.

"Well, no." He most decidedly did not.

"Then no."

He wasn't sure what the light had to do with the spell, but maybe she was doing some complicated mana-building prep work and it would be easier with a light. Which also meant she'd get more mana out of it without one.

It was a thought, a thought he could try to hold onto while he tried not to think about of tantalizing soft skin and the few times he'd had good, logistical reasons to hold her hand before. There was absolutely no good, logistical reason to hold it now.

He kept an ear out for mals, but for the last two or three minutes that they'd been locked in here, they'd been delightfully unassaulted and it'd be nice if things stayed that way.

There was a squeak under the floorboards.

He opened his mouth and raised a hand to cast.

El said rather forcefully, "If you knock out the floor and drop us into the pipes, I swear I'm going to kill you."

Orion very, very quickly revised his admittedly stupid plan of doing just that and cast a light to determine what targeted magic would do the job instead. It was a rather small one. He tried an electric zap and miraculously, it worked.

The lock clicked and the door swung open.

Orion discovered, with a start, that he'd been leaning against it and flailed wildly as he fell out of the closet. His arms hit El, who exclaimed something angry and unintelligible. She fell with him, and they were in a tangled heap on the school hallway floor, her face above his, flushed with embarrassment and anger, and she was _lying_ on top of him...

Orion was only a guy after all. He would never admit later, but he actually squeaked in distress.

El scrambled off him and snatched her hands back from offering him help up.

He forced himself to get up and brush himself off as if his face wasn't flaming hot. "Uh, thanks for getting us out."

"Right." She grabbed his wrist and dragged him in the direction of the dorms. Storming off was all well and good if you didn't live in a school infested with predatory species that preferred to eat teenage wizards.

So she stormed off with him in tow, her soft hand against his skin.

Orion Lake grinned like a loon and let her.


End file.
